Posts Tagged how to market a book

A while ago I was at an author event about book publicity. Finding magazines, blogs and broadcast media that will review our book or interview us. How do we do that? The first thing to do, said my friend Ben Cameron of Cameron PR, is to get the right mindset. Think of it as creative. And fun.

Afterwards, I fell into conversation with Tina, who didn’t see it as fun. She said: ‘I don’t feel comfortable putting myself out there. Asking people if they’ll interview me or feature my book. I just can’t. How do you do that?’

I’d just been conducting my own campaign for Not Quite Lost. It went better than I expected. I managed to pitch successfully to bloggers, mainstream print magazines and BBC radio stations. The first time I pressed Send I had to gird my courage, but after that it didn’t feel embarrassing.

I told Tina that. She wasn’t convinced.

This interested me because Tina wasn’t exactly a mouse. She taught workshops. She controlled groups of creative people and made them do stuff. She was also a playwright, and accustomed to plain-speaking feedback from actors and directors. Yet she was saying: ‘Asking for publicity … it’s like walking into a roomful of strangers and trying to talk to them. Don’t tell me you find that easy?’

I agreed I didn’t. Not remotely. ‘But that other stuff is different.’

‘Why?’ asked Tina, which made me think.

Obviously, you get used to pitching. You learn that magazines, newspapers and radio shows are looking for material. They don’t open your email and cackle at your ridiculous hubris. You’re all in a day’s work. They actually hope you’ll match their requirements.

But the biggest realisation – the one that let me pitch without a qualm – was the realisation that none of it, actually, was about me. I was not seeking attention for me. It was for my books.

So it’s not about you, tiny naked vulnerable mind being dragged into a big bright light to explain yourself. It’s not even about personal confidence, whatever that is. It’s about confidence in your work.

This week I had a book club event for My Memories of a Future Life. It went well, but last night, I had the anxiety dream. In it, I was talking to a presenter from BBC radio who said: ‘I think I’ll cancel this interview. I don’t like you very much.’

And this is the thing. Whether we’re seeking publicity or releasing a book, it will always take a little of our skin. But I think this is like the anxiety that puts a performer on their mettle, or makes a doctor careful with their responsibility for a human life. It’s unavoidable, so we might as use it as a strength.

Though I still have problems walking into a roomful of strangers – and had reason to consider this in my latest newsletter.

Give me your thoughts!

PS I had a nice surprise this week when Feedspot nominated me as one of their top 3 UK blogs for selfpublishers. If I should thank any of you guys for this – then thank you!

Last week I spoke at the New Generation Publishing summit and this thorniest of questions came up: how do you strike a balance between writing books and working on marketing and sales?

We had good examples of two extremes. In the marketing-gone-mad corner, we had debut author Toni Jenkins. She cheerfully confessed that when her first book launched she went to the mattresses, working until late every night, identifying possible audiences, writing emails introducing herself, following up leads. She added that her mentors at NGP, while applauding her energy, reminded her not to lose sight of her writing.

Whether we go it alone or have the backing of publishers or PR agencies, we need to accept that we have to be our books’ ambassadors. But not only is marketing a separate job that takes time to learn, we can’t easily measure what works. (This remains an eternal conundrum even for experienced marketers.) Small wonder that we either get marketing frenzy (like Toni) or cover our ears (Daniel’s authors).

Measuring results

If you’re writing, it’s easy to measure results. More words added to your manuscript, more scenes feeling ‘right’, more research done.

With marketing, you don’t know if you’re wasting a whole heap of time. Some activities give measurable results, but a lot more don’t. Marketing is about presence as much as sales – your Facebook adverts, social media activity, newsletters, guest blogging may not always ring the cash registers. Your shot-in-the-dark letters to book bloggers or other persons of influence might not get a reply, but they might still make an impression. They let people know that you exist; that you produce.

The rewards of marketing are long-long-longterm. Like adopting a healthy lifestyle, the most significant benefits aren’t instant, they’re cumulative. Stick at it, over months and years, and you start to see that people know of you, they’ve heard of your books. (Then you can get embarrassed when they introduce themselves to you at events, and you rack your brains in case they’re a Facebook friend or devoted blog commenter you can’t remember, ahem.)

Can anyone hear me? Anyone?

And the converse of that is …. If you don’t do it, your book launch is like a tree that falls over in a wood with no one to hear.

Time for both

So we must make time for both marketing AND writing.

And we must make sure that one doesn’t swallow the other (barring exceptional circumstances like a book launch, or the final push to polish a book for press).

But so many possibilities…

The trouble is, marketing could drive us bonkers with possibilities. Every week I trip over several new wonderful things I could consider. To evaluate them takes time – and I might end up discarding them because they won’t reach my audience. This is why we get so overwhelmed, because we could do this 24/7 and never, ever get to the end of it. Then we enter a panic cycle of thinking we’re not doing enough, or not doing the right things, or everyone is somewhere we’re not.

But it’s possible to develop a sensible approach.

This is mine. It has two principles.

1 A formal list. Each Friday, I make a to-do list for the next week. It includes the marketing tasks I’ve decided are worth doing, balanced with my writing, editing and mentoring commitments. (This also allows you to audit how much time you’re spending in the marketing and writing camps.)

2 Obey the list. Do not do any task unless you’ve added it to your list. Have you stumbled across a Brilliant New Thing? Do not do it this week if your dance card is already full. That great new gimmick, website, social media platform, hot books blogger will still be there in seven days’ time. It will not leave the planet. So whenever you read about a new wonderful opportunity, resist the urge to do it immediately. Unless it has an urgent deadline – eg a competition – put it on the list for next week. You already have a plan for this week. Continue with that. And remember: you’re working on long-term presence as well as short-term sales.

It’s actually bleeding obvious, isn’t it? Again, I’m going to use the comparison with diets. Diets work if you stick to the rules. They don’t if you don’t. And the great thing about this marketing/writing diet is that you’re allowed as much cake as you like.

And the other part of the plan, of course, is to have a solid writing process that leaves you free to create. So allow me to discreetly mention Nail Your Novel, a system I developed from the questions I’m most commonly asked by writers, and still use now, with many books behind me. Even more audaciously, allow me to suggest that Nail Your Novel trio make groovy gifts for other scribblers you know.

Have you hit on a plan to balance marketing and writing? Let’s discuss!

Once upon a time, authors could get a great start if they made their book available free. Back in 2008 and 2009, I got huge traction for the original Nail Your Novelwhen I offered it free as a pdf. There wasn’t much free material out there, so it got attention. Indeed, as far back as the early 2000s, science fiction writer Cory Doctorow had been giving away digital copies of his novels on a Creative Commons basis, famously saying that his chief problem was to battle obscurity.

But times change. ‘Free’ soon became a deluge. If readers grabbed them in the digital equivalent of a supermarket sweep, they probably didn’t even remember they had them. In all likelihood, those books sat unnoticed in the bottomless vaults of their Kindles.

I flirted briefly with free when KDP Select started. Indeed, I organised a free event to coincide with World Book Night for Authors Electric, a group blog of published authors I used to belong to. We each gave away a book for five days, campaigned our socks off, tweeted until we grew beaks, watched the tallies mount in our KDP dashboards… and virtually nothing came of it afterwards.

Now, is a giveaway the way for authors to get noticed? I contend it is not for everyone.

Where free works

I’ll admit that I worry we give away our work too easily. If we create a culture where a book costs less than a sheet of gift-wrap and a greetings card, there’s something badly wrong. An ebook may not have material form, but it does give you more time and experience than something you glance at and throw away. And tellingly, the people who get cross with me for speaking out are the ones who say they refuse to spend more than a couple of dollars on a book, or berate me for not putting my books into Kindle Unlimited.

So that’s my rant done. However, free does work in some cases – where it adds value, rather than dilutes it.

Lest you think I’m waxing hypocritical, with my WordPress blog and Hootsuite account, let me state that I think free works very well with certain kind of services.

And certain kinds of book. In the kind of genre markets where the series rules, making the first book free can work very well. The authors who do this have plenty more titles to offer once readers are hooked. (Joanna Penn has had great results giving the first book of her series away free, and offering free books as incentives to sign up to newsletters – her post about it is here.) These authors are using free books in the way that WordPress and Hootsuite give starter packages free – to build long-term trust and familiarity. (When I want to upgrade my web services, WordPress and Hootsuite will be my first ports of call.)

Where ‘free’ may not work

But outside those genres, how do readers decide to try an unfamiliar author? Especially those who write the more individual kind of book, perhaps not easily pigeonholed? Usually, it’s by deciding if they like to spend time in that author’s company.

How do they do that? By reading something that sparks their interest. That could be anything. It doesn’t have to be a book. If you’re one of those authors, every post you write, every meaningful conversation you have on social media is already giving a sample of your voice, your personality, your tastes, your passions, the workings of your unique mind. The books you write will be made from that same material. If that doesn’t persuade readers you are fascinating and intriguing, giveaways and free books won’t make much difference.

Giveaways as prizes

Indeed, I have evidence that free giveaways with delayed prizes aren’t working any more. Every week I offer a guest spot on The Undercover Soundtrack. In past years, book giveaways got good uptake. Now, they hardly get any. The blog’s readership has grown enormously, but no one’s bothering to contend for prizes.

Perhaps it’s partly impatience. If a reader likes the look of a book from its Undercover Soundtrack, they don’t want to wait a week for the giveaway result. They buy it immediately. So who’s left to take part in the giveaway? The people who don’t much mind whether they read it or not.

Even giveaway campaigns to well-targeted readers don’t seem to produce much return these days. I recently donated copies of Nail Your Novel for a fellow writer’s launch campaign, which should in theory have resulted in more exposure for the series. I saw no increase in sales afterwards.

I have, however, had great results when I’ve done a giveaway of something special – like the NYN notebook or the My Memories of a Future Life antimatter edition. But those were specially made prizes, limited editions. Readers will pitch up for a unique prize, but they seem pretty indifferent to an ebook they might or might not get.

Spend your free books wisely

I know this is contentious. But I see a lot of writers who think they’re not trying hard enough if they don’t give books away and don’t examine whether the tactic is working for them. I think we have to look hard at every free ebook we spend. If we get a worthwhile return, that was an ebook well spent, no doubt about it. If not, we should stop.

Last year I wrote a post about whether I’d advise an author to publish or selfpublish. A year on, the landscape for authors is remarkably different – or perhaps not remarkable if you’ve been waiting for a bubble to burst.

Indie authors have seen sales plummet because of the sheer numbers of books available, and subscription schemes such as Kindle Unlimited have created a breed of readers who won’t shop outside a limited free list.

Might this mean it’s better to be traditionally published?

Not from what I’ve seen. My friends with trad deals aren’t having a good time either. Leaving aside royalties and advances (which seem to offer little financial reward for all the hard work writing), their books aren’t getting a decent chance for a long-term future.

A friend whose first novel won a major award in 2012 has just watched his fourth novel launch with no more fanfare than a tiny paragraph in a Sunday paper. His only other support was a training day on a social media course. And don’t even ask about rights grabs – where authors might wait years to reclaim a book to publish it themselves.

Tough times, my friends. So savvy writers will be looking for smarter ways to publish.

Does it sound familiar? Indie author collaborations are attempting to create the best of what a traditional publisher does. And this means we should…

View traditional publishing deals as collaborations
And so this means the smartest way to suss out deals from traditional publishers is to consider them as collaborations. What will they do for you that you could not do yourself? What are they asking from you in return? Is it reasonable?

No one I know writes a book to sacrifice it to a bad deal (see my remark about rights grabbing above). On the other hand, no one wants to turn down an opportunity that would be good, as far as can reasonably be forecast in a world of fickle readers and luck.

So this is what I’d say to the 2015 writer who’s asking my advice on whether to selfpublish or query traditional publishers.

1 Whether you intend to go indie or not, learn about selfpublishing

– then you’ll know how to weigh up the value of a publishing deal. As well as the advance (which usually won’t cover the time you spent writing), a publisher offers editorial guidance, copy editing and proof reading, cover design as appropriate for the audience, print book preparation, publicity using their contacts and reputation, print distribution.

Some (not all) are easy to source yourself or make good decisions about. Some can’t even be priced, like the publisher’s reputation – but see my remark above about the award-winning writer with his latest launch. Some of that value might be emotional – the confidence that everything has been done properly. This may not be as guaranteed as you think. There are traditionally published writers who sell enough to get meticulous attention from publishers, and others who get a tired, overworked editor who simply doesn’t have time to do the job as well as they’d like.

The more you know about selfpublishing, the more you can assess a publisher’s value as a partner. If you have tried to produce a quality book yourself, you’ll have a realistic idea of the value a publisher adds – or whether you can do well without them.

2 Be aware of the limits of traditional print and distribution

Distribution of print books is an area where traditional publishers have a clear advantage – (however, the Alliance of Independent Authors is working on a print sales project for indies ). Books in a publisher’s catalogue get promoted by a sales team. You get the heft of their mighty reputation! Result!

But let’s have a reality check. Go into Waterstones or another large book emporium. Look along the shelves where the books are spine-outwards. How many are there? Which ones catch your eye? Probably none of them. They’re the store’s wallpaper. You’re already cover-drunk by the time you’ve passed the books on the tables or in the window or in special display boxes.

Recording a radio show, surrounded by lovely wallpaper

A book in a store needs more than a meek slot in the alphabetically-ordered shelves to be discovered by a casual browser, no matter how beautiful its title or cover. So even if your book is going into big stores, it’s unlikely to be found unless it gets special prominence – both in the store and in the wider world. For that, the publisher has to spend money. Independent bookstores are a different matter as the selection is smaller and more personalised, but you still have to hope your book gets emphasised by the sales reps or the store will never hear about it.

3 It isn’t either-or

Whether you start as indie or traditionally published, you won’t always stay that way. Traditionally published authors might leave their publishers (or be dropped) and go it alone. They might selfpublish their backlist. Indie authors might begin on their own, then strike a deal. Some do all of it concurrently (hybrid authors), choosing what’s best for each project.

Some publishers are experimenting with partnering deals, where an author who is experienced in production keeps control of some stages of the editorial process. I like this model very much – it seems a good way to use everyone’s strengths.

Publishing and selfpublishing is now a spectrum. Most writers will zip up and down it, according to where a project fits.

3 Selfpublishing your first book

Don’t be in a rush! Although modern selfpublishing tools let you revise and tweak a naive edition, you cannot edit your reputation. Take your time. Do it properly. You’ve got a lot to learn – about writing to a publishable standard and about publishing itself. The world will wait – but it won’t forget if you mess it up. See my post here about leaving enough time to use editorial feedback.

And finally…

The selfpublishing world is maturing. Suddenly I notice there are a lot of us who have been in this game a few years now, building solid reputations and devoted audiences. I think 2015 will be the year of the exciting collaboration – with other authors, with translators, with artistes from other media (such as voice actors). Perhaps with editors too.

We’ll choose what’s best for each book. We’ll also get more expert at putting a realistic value on contributions, including those of traditional players in publishing, both imprints and agents, and with luck this will lead to deals that are fair and fruitful.

Writing may be solitary. Publishing – and selfpublishing – doesn’t have to be.

Have you collaborated on selfpublishing projects – or struck an unorthodox deal with a publisher? Are there any success stories or cautionary tales you’d like to share? How do you feel about the prospects of the solo selfpublisher for 2015? Optimistic? Pessimistic? How do you feel about traditional publishing? Let’s discuss!

AFTERWORD Since I first published this post, Peter Snell and I recorded an edition of the radio show in which we interviewed two founders of an authors’ collective, Triskele Books. They gave us the lowdown on how they formed, how the collective works and the pros and cons. Listen by clicking the clever thingy below.

I’ve had this question from Daniel Vertrees, who is making his first print edition, and it turned into a pros and cons discussion so I thought it would make a useful post.

Did you use one of the Createspace ISBN? I want to be able to sell directly (like book signings) and wonder if it is better to buy the ISBN?

A what?

The ISBN is a unique digital identifier for a book (oh here’s the Wiki entry). Traditionally, publishers buy them in batches of between 10 and several thousand, and allocate them to each edition of any book – even ebooks. If you’re UK based you can get them from Nielsen, in the US from Bowker. CreateSpace offers you the option of a free ISBN or you can input one you’ve bought yourself. If you use the other main indie publishing print-on-demand company, Ingram Spark, you need to supply your own ISBN.

Your own ISBN or CreateSpace’s? The pros and cons

There’s a lot of emotional talk about whether you should buy an ISBN or use CS’s. Here are a few myths dispelled.

Doesn’t the book ‘belong’ to CreateSpace if you use their ISBN?

No it doesn’t. It belongs to you. You have the copyright. However, you are restricted about where you can have the book with that ISBN printed. See below.

CreateSpace will be seen as the publisher of record.

Yes it will. I’m not sure this makes any difference to individual buyers who are browsing for your book. If they’re trawling down the book details, liking what they see, they’re unlikely to screech to a horrified halt if they see it’s published by CreateSpace. They probably won’t notice.

However, the CreateSpace name may deter booksellers from ordering. But that’s not because the name is associated with Beelzebub Bezos, self-publishing or any other giant imaginary stigma. It’s because CreateSpace’s distribution terms (through Expanded Distribution) are not as favourable as Ingram Spark (Lightning Source for indies). CreateSpace discounts are not as competitive and delivery times are not as swift.

However 2

In the past, indie authors who published via Lightning Source (now Ingram Spark, remember) found their books sometimes showed ‘out of stock’ notices on Amazon. This has caused much hair-tearing, and mumblings that the big corporations were having some kind of squabble with publishers caught in the middle.

So now, many indies are now buying their own ISBN, printing through CreateSpace to sell on Amazon, then printing the same book (with the same ISBN, remember) to distribute everywhere else. Best of both worlds.

It all sounds good – except for the cost of ISBNs. In some countries they’re free, in which case you’re laughing. In countries where they are not, you’re not laughing. From Nielsen, you’re looking at £144 for 10. The unit cost is lower if you buy 100 (£342) but that’s rather too painful for me. Allocating ISBNs used to be a big administrative faff (I used to fill in the publisher’s forms when I was in charge of an editorial department) but now it could surely be automated and free. Don’t get me started, but I’d rather use that money for something that would benefit the reader, such as better cover art. Also, publishing on Ingram has a cost too, they charge for changes and the set-up is more challenging.

More on expanded distribution

1 So far, all my print titles have used CreateSpace ISBNs. Despite the distribution factors, this doesn’t stop me getting bulk orders every month for the Nail Your Novels. I can’t tell where they’re going, but they are being bought in bulk, somewhere. Maybe I’d get more bulk orders if I had my own ISBN and an Ingram version. Who knows?

2 According to Bowker:

Without an ISBN, you will not be found in most bookstores, whether online, or down the street from your house. Buying an ISBN is your first step to insure that your book is not lost in the wilderness.

This is true, of course. But even if books are on databases, and available at competitive rates, they sell zip without publicity. Bookstores get some of their stock because customers ask for it. But much of their speculative stock is books they order because they are featured in the wholesalers’ magazines, which is arranged by publishers’ marketing departments, or because a publisher’s rep called. So even with a shiny Bowker-or-Nielsen ISBN, the world is not your oyster. How much of a publicity campaign can you mount? Put another way, without a shiny Bowker-or-Nielsen ISBN you may not be missing very many sales because getting noticed is the most difficult thing of all. (Sorry.)

Short version, please

Sorry, Daniel. If you’re getting your paperback made for Amazon sales and direct hand sales, a CreateSpace ISBN will be fine. Certainly if you’re new to making books, use CreateSpace as your training wheels. Also, there’s nothing to stop you making a new version with your own ISBN, and uploading to CreateSpace and Ingram later on. You can change the CreateSpace settings to take your book off expanded distribution, so that the copy that reaches catalogues is on bookseller-friendly Ingram. You can also, if you have a really neat mind, disable the old CreateSpace listing by making the book unprintable, which takes new copies off sale although the old listing will remain.

As for me, I usually use the Createspace ISBNs. But I’m trying a new tack for the plot book. I’ve made a deal with a small publisher to put the book out with their ISBN. They get the book for their catalogue, I do everything else. I’m initially printing through CreateSpace, then seeing if a non-CS ISBN printed with Ingram Spark will give me any advantage. It would be nice if I could eat my pessimistic words about ISBNs. I shall report. 🙂

This seems to be ‘back to basics’ week on this blog. On Thursday I scrambled out a fresher’s guide to ebooks in response to questions at a speaking engagement. And this podcast, recorded the previous week, seems to be the perfect complement. It’s with Nick Thacker, who has a regular show called Self-Publishing Answers, where he endeavours to discover the secrets to writing, publishing and selling successfully.

I’ve answered many of these questions before, but I found it interesting how my perspective on some of them has changed with experience. Especially book marketing. Normally when I’m asked about selling books, I find I run out of useful advice very quickly. I don’t buy advertising, I don’t game the charts and I don’t price strategically – all things that most indies do to get the best marketing advantage. The marketing I do is guesswork, whim and finger-crossing, mainly. Even so, I’ve noticed certain patterns that work – which I didn’t realise until I started discussing them with Nick.